Human Skulls

It is getting close to All Hallows Eve, otherwise known as Halloween. It is a time when monsters traditionally walk the Earth door to door and extort treats to stave off tricks.

The most important part of the costume is, of course, the skill. Skull images have been fascinating to living people for ages and have served various purposes over the years. One look at the photo below and one might think that those purposes may not always be serious.

A source of light to read by is useful.

One of the most recognizable uses of skull images is the Jolly Roger flag.

Some pirates in the 1610s began using the Jolly Roger to identify themselves, running up the flag at the moment they attacked an intended victim, often replacing a false flag used to disguise who they were beforehand. By the 1620's, its use was pretty common. There were a number of variations--for example the crossed bones were sometimes crossed swords instead--but the skull was the main feature.

Skulls tend to be pretty important for maintaining one's good looks. For some inexplicable reason, some people are attracted to the idea of owning replicas of heads from which the skulls have been removed. 

Here are some images of human skulls. It is useful to be able to see what they look like from various angles.

With the exception of the mandible (the jaw bone), skulls look like they are one unified bone. They don't start out that way. When born, baby's heads are made of five skull bones, four sutures, and two fontanelles (spaces). These allow skulls some flexibility when passing through the birth canal.

It is only later that the various parts of baby skulls fuse together. Skull anatomy is not as simple as it looks to the uninitiated.

There are plenty of human skull replicas for sale on the web if one wants a macabre paperweight, mantle decoration, or Halloween display.

Hominids, predecessors of modern humans, have left skeletal remains for scientists to study. They can sometimes be fascinating for their loose resemblance to modern skulls. This is a plaster cast of one.

Other Skulls

Human or near human skulls aren't the only interesting ones around. The skull of the saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) makes it look as if this prehistoric feline was perpetually yawning. saber-toothed cats first came to the Western Hemisphere 5 million years ago. The last ones died out roughly 10,000 years ago.

Some skulls are larger than others. This is a sperm whale skull.

The huge, bulging "forehead" that sperm whales are known for is all flesh. The vast difference between a sperm whale's skeletal remains and the living animal is an example of how difficult it can be for scientists to reconstruct the living appearance of extinct prehistoric animals.

Some people speculate that elephant skulls like this prehistoric dwarf elephant may be how the cyclops myth started.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) thought that animal skulls she found in wanderings around her New Mexico home were worthy painting subjects. This 1931 painting is of a cow's skull.

A few years later (1935), she painted this Ram's Head

Artwork

Three of the paintings below were illustrations based on writings of Santō Kyōden (1761–1816). He was an artist, writer, and tobacco shop owner. Some of his art and writings got him in trouble with authorities during periods of puritanical reforms, so he shifted his focus to mainly writing relatively safe subjects. His work became incredibly popular, selling as many as 10,000 copies, an unheard of amount at the time.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849)

Though most famous for his ukiyo-e landscapes, Hokusai painted many other subjects. At one point, he planned a series of prints based on a game known as Hyaku monogatari (100 Ghost Tales). The object of the game was for a group of people to tell scary stories late at night. After each story, the wick of an oil lamp was turned down slightly. When the 100th tale was told, the lamp was turned off completely, and ghosts were supposed to appear. Only five works in the series are known, and few copies are extant. They became known and appreciated in the West in the 1890s, and faithful facsimiles were made. The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (1833) is one of them based on a novel by Santō Kyōden written in 1803. Kohada Koheiji was drowned in Asaka swamp by his wife and her lover. His ghost has come back to haunt them. In the painting, he is pulling aside a mosquito net covering his wife.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858)

Taira no Kiyomori (1118 – 1181) was a historical figure during the Heian Period (794 – 1185). He was one of the most powerful men in the government; even more than the Emperor at times. One of the many events in his life was the bloody Heiji Rebellion in 1160. Though there is little evidence that Kiyomori had a conscious, this painting of him by Hiroshige suggests the possibility that he did as he gazes over a winter landscape, seeing signs of the many dead he was responsible for.

tagawa Kuniyoshi (1798 – 1861)

Kuniyoshi was best known for his ukiyo-e of bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful people), but he also liked to paint historical and mythical subjects. The triptych below, Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre, combines the two interests. Takiyasha was the real daughter of a real regional lord who attempted to set up an alternate capital in competition with the Emperor in Kyōto. He was defeated and executed in 939. Takiyasha continued to live in her father's palace. The myth arose from a story written by Santō Kyōden in 1807.  It tells of how Takiyasha defeated representatives of the Emperor who had come to root out remaining rebels by reading a spell from a scroll that caused a huge skeleton to rise from the depths to frighten the solders away. Kuniyoshi painted the triptych in the 1843 to 1847 timeframe.

Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831 – 1889)

Kyōsai initially studied art under Kuniyoshi but later was more formally educated in the Kanō school. Though he produced many forms of art, he became best known for caricatures, something that got him in trouble with authorities more than once. Though he never met Hokusai, his independent style has led art historians to think of him as Hokusai's artistic successor. He has been called "perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839 – 1892)

Yoshitoshi was one of the last great masters of the ukiyo-e tradition with a career that spanned the last years of the Edo Period (1603 – 1868) and the early years of modern Japan. He was a great innovator. Among his Edo Period paintings were ones depicting the Hell Courtesan, the daughter of a samurai who was kidnapped and sold to a brothel. She first appeared in an anonymously written 1672 story, later embellished by Santō Kyōden in 1809. She began to call herself the Hell Courtesan after meeting a monk, the historically real Ikkyū Sōjun (1394 - 1481). When she saw him dancing with a group of skeletons, she realized that Ikkyū was someone special and became his disciple. Yoshitoshi's Enlightenment of The Hell Courtesan was painted in 1890.